Provenance

The sitter's niece, Catherine Yates Pollock [c. 1760-1805] and her husband, George Pollock [1762-1820], New York and New Orleans; their son, Carlile Pollock [1791-1845], New Orleans; his daughter, Marie Louise Pollock Chiapella [1828-1902]; possibly to her son, Henry Chiapella [1849-c. 1908]; his niece, Louise Chiapella Formento, New Orleans; sold 1911 to Isaac Monroe Cline [1861-1955], New Orleans;[1] purchased 16 January 1918 by Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[2] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection on 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A.W. Mellon Education and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1940 to NGA.

[1] Cline wrote Thomas B. Clarke in New York on 11 February 1918 that he had purchased the portraits of Mrs. Yates, her husband Richard Yates [NGA 1942.8.29], and Lawrence Reid Yates [NGA 1940.1.5] in 1911, and had later bought portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Yates' daughter Catherine Yates Pollock [NGA 1942.8.19] and her husband George Pollock [NGA 1942.8.18] (see NGA curatorial files). Cline told David E. Finley that he had purchased all five Stuart portraits from Formento; letter of 1 March 1948, in NGA curatorial files. For Cline's dates see Historic New Orleans Collection, Encyclopedia of New Orleans Artists 1718-1918, New Orleans, 1987, 81. For the Pollock family see Horace Edwin Hayden, Pollock Genealogy, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1883, 48; letters from Bureau of Archives, St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, 3 April 1919 and 23 July 1918; "Last Will and Testament of George Pollock," signed 2 September 1819, New Orleans, and will of Carlile Pollock, signed 16 April 1845, New Orleans (copies, NGA curatorial files).

[2] The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). Clarke sent Clarence J. Dearden of Art House, Inc., to New Orleans to negotiate the purchase of the five portraits; Dearden confirmed the purchase in a telegram to Clarke on 16 January 1918 (NGA curatorial files).

Exhibition History

1922

Portraits Painted in the United States by Early American Artists, The Union League Club, New York, February 1922, no. 18.

1928

Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue.